Word of caution when traveling: Hotels Getting Rid of Proper Bathroom Doors

[allegorical oracle]

We might do well to check this out before checking in....

Wall Street Journal

First they came for the closets. Then they took the bath tubs. Now, hotels are stripping away the only thing separating us from the animals: the bathroom door.

Guests are waving goodbye to the luxury of a fully-closable opaque barrier between the restroom and bedroom, checking in to find sliding barn doors, curtains, strategically placed walls and other replacements that aren’t as proficient in the art of noise and smell containment.

In some cases, they’re not even good at hiding the view.

“You couldn’t see the fine details, but you could see everything else,” said Denise Milano Sprung of the frosted bathroom door of the hotel room she shared with her husband at the Calgary Airport Marriott. “I’ve been married for 25 years, I love my husband, but I don’t want to see him use the restroom.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/hotels-are-getting-rid-of-proper-bathroom-doors-and-guests-are-revolting/ar-AA1UznDx

[Aristus]

1. Private equity meets the hospitality industry.

Get rid of everything that makes a product or a service appealing to the consumer. Buy out the competition, so everyone is forced to pay for their shitty product or service.

[flvegan]

2. Enshitterification. n/t

[AZJonnie]

3. Lol, perfect!

[dalton99a]

4. NEXT: Hotels introduce outhouse as standard amenity; toilet paper available for extra fee

[luv2fly]

5. Pretty common across SE Asia

People will adapt, we have bigger problems.

[ColoringFool]

6. "SE Asia"? Well, THERE'S A Fab Comparison!

[luv2fly]

7. Yep, we all use bathrooms. n/t

[ancianita]

9. BUT. This is only the beginning of the privatization rollout for this country by fascist oligarchs.

That right there is totally in keeping with the bigger problems we face.

[leftstreet]

16. +1

[Bev54]

11. I lived and travelled SE Asia for years and never experienced this in any

hotel room, only in the airport hotel in Vancouver before I flew out. The hotels in Asia had proper doors, ill fitting in many cases, but solid doors.

[luv2fly]

12. Me too

Our experiences differ apparently.

[meadowlander]

15. The only time I've experienced this was in Hawaii

Where the hotel room had the bathroom in the usual interior place but instead of a full wall there was a half wall so people could pull the curtain at the top back and I guess look out the window across the beds to see the view while they took a bath.

It was very weird and you were super conscious that only a thin curtain waving in the A/C stood between you and exposure of your bathroom business for the 95% of the time you were in there for the usual reasons.

The view wasn't even that great but I'm sure they used it as an excuse to upsell it as a honeymoon suite or something. This would have been at least 10 years ago.

[John1956PA]

8. A famous wrestler wrote about a shattering encounter he had with a dainty toilet bowl in India.

https://www.thesportster.com/wwe-paul-wight-vs-an-indian-bathroom-how-big-show-shattered-toliet-bowl/

[LisaM]

10. Those barn door ones are AWFUL.

We had one a couple of years ago. It wouldn't close all the way and it kind of swung back and forth. I agree, a big problem for privacy and smells. Our family often does part of Christmas in a hotel room, too, so it is an issue. It was bad enough when they took out tubs and just had glassed in showers, which I loathe. Nowhere to hang a washcloth and it's almost impossible in some of them not to spray water everywhere.

They're doing it with TVs too. Way fewer channels or sometimes no channels.

Oh, and barn doors are ugly, by the way. Really ugly.

[chowder66]

13. Yesterday I was on Trulia just wasting some time.

I like looking at homes that I will never have... but one stood out. It was a mansion here in California somewhere, pretty traditional but they put in barn doors everywhere. It looked absolutely ridiculous.

Some people just go with whatever fad and they don't hold back.

Barn doors don't seem that efficient.

[LisaM]

17. I call it Property Brothers Chic.

The next trend on shows will be undoing all the ugly rooms the Property Brothers built.

[AverageOldGuy]

14. BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU BOOK YOUR ROOM

We travel very little, so, we were not aware of this -- anyone who travels a good bit may know about it.

Be very careful when you book online because it could cost you big time.

Try this: Assume you want to book a room in, say, a Holiday Inn Express in Little Rock, Arkansas. Google "Holiday Inn Express Little Rock" then look VERY CAREFULLY at the URLs on the results. You will see all sorts of links that look like they are to the hotel, or to the Holiday Inn booking site, but instead these URLs take you to a carefully-concealed thrid-party booking site -- you will NOT be booking through HI or the hotel.

Why is this important? This is what happened to us. I booked, unwittingly, through a third-party site. 36 hours before check-in, we had to cancel. I called the motel and cancelled. Next month my credit card showed the full charge for the stay. I called the motel, talked with the manager who explained things to me.

It seems that third-party sites use applications that constantly ping reservation sites checking their prices. If you made your reservation through one of these sites, and they find a price cheaper than the price at which you reserved your room, they will cancel then rebook you at the cheaper rate, often at the last minute -- you never know about this. Hotels/motels retaliated by placing limits on cancellations -- that is, I cancelled 36 hours before check-in, but, the motel now required cancellations to be 48 hours before because they were losing so much to the third-party booking agencies.

The manager who explained this too me also said they are placing surcharges on rooms booked through third-party sites -- not much but it adds to your bill and you may not even notice it.